Former leading New Zealand publisher and bookseller, and widely experienced judge of both the Commonwealth Writers Prize and the Montana New Zealand Book Awards, talks about what he is currently reading, what impresses him and what doesn't, along with chat about the international English language book scene, and links to sites of interest to booklovers.

Friday, August 28, 2015

Reviewers praise Lagercrantz's Spider's Web

Published August 27, 2015. By Sarah Shaffi - The Bookseller

Initial reviews for David Lagercrantz’s The Girl in the Spider’s Web (MacLehouse), the fourth novel in the late Stieg Larsson’s Millennium series, have been largely favourable, with the Telegraph giving the book four stars and the Guardian saying “Lagercrantz has constructed an elegant plot”.

The book centres on characters Lisbeth Salander, the hacker who gave the series’ first book its title – The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo – and on journalist Mikael Blomkvist.In The Girl in the Spider’s Web, translated from Swedish by George Goulding, Blomkvist is contacted by a Swedish scientist whose life is in danger, and who has been working with Salander.Salander’s work trying to hack into the American National Security Agency has made her the target of ruthless cyber gangsters who call themselves The Spiders.Reviewers have pointed out how closely Lagercrantz’s book reads like Larsson’s originals.The Telegraph’s Jake Kerridge said at times he “kept forgetting for several pages at a time that I wasn’t reading genuine Larsson”.More